You may have noticed that I photoshoped my camera in the top photo to look like the new Hasselblad compact camera. This is probably as close to owning a Hasselblad as I will ever come, so this amuses me to no end. :-D

A few years ago, back in April of 2010, I got to play with (at the time) one the latest Hasselblad digital medium format cameras. (Thanks to a special invite from Hasselblad via Frasers of Gloucester.) I have to say, I was blown away! By both the cameras and the motorbikes! :-D

It was the Hasselblad H4D-40 that I got to use which retailed at the time I think for around £13,000, body only. If you wanted to buy the latest Hasselblad today you'd need around £40,000 for a body and a couple good lenses. Yea, that's why I don't have one.

Here are a couple of photos that I took with the H4D-40 back in 2010.

I so loved using that camera. So much so that I just stayed up until 1am looking for used ones on ebay. I found one with an 80mm lens, which is what I used above, for only £10,000! Yea, a bit out of my reach. I also found one a bit older with an 80mm lens for £3500. That's just about within my reach, but it's quite an old bit of kit by now. But, with such a large sensor it will be better quality than the camera I currently shoot with. With the large file of the images above you can zoom in and zoom in and zoom in and still have a fabulously crisp sharp image....even zooming in greater 100 percent! Try that with your current camera! Unless you have a medium format camera it's not going to be very pretty.

So, my Sony RX100mII will most likely be as close to owning a Hasselblad as I will ever come, but that won't stop me from dreaming about them. One can dream can't they? Besides, there was once a time when I thought I'd never own a Canon 5D, and now I own a Canon 5D II, I thought that camera was way out of my reach at one time, and here I am today thinking about buying my second one! The mark III....or maybe I'll wait for the mark IV, that should be out before too much longer. If I can't own/afford a Hasselblad at least I can now own my once dream camera, the Canon 5D series. :-D

(Note: What I did to the image at the top of this blog post... I inverted the second image to make the black camera seem silver (Like the Hasselblad), which in turn made all the colours go funny. I coloured the lens back in to make it black again. I then added a photo of a wooden hand grip on the left and the Hasselblad logo on the right over the Sony logo....which now spells sHy. Hence the title of this blog post....Just sHy of a Hasselblad.)

Sunday, 9 November 2014

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the United Kingdom, the day we remember and commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts. And in some cases, as my own, around the world.

The poppy is key in this remembrance, we wear them around this time of year to show we remember, to show respect and to give us hope.

We don't usually have live poppies this time of year, the frost kills them off before now. But this year it's been rather mild and we have poppies growing in our garden. In the above photo are some of those poppies growing in our garden this Remembrance Sunday morning. I photographed them this morning.

This year there is a special installation of poppies around The Tower of London for Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day is the 11th of November. In observance every year there is a two minute silence at 11am on the 11th day of November (11th month).

I was recently in London working near the Tower of London and I was lucky to get to see the Poppy installation. I could see it from my hotel room actually. Below are some photos I took on 22nd & 23rd of October 2014.

View from my hotel room in London.

I was in London working for and covering The Charity Learning Consortium's annual awards ceremony and seminars. Amazing people and organization to work for.

Viewing the poppies.

A closer view of the poppies

View of the poppies around The Tower of London, with the Tower Bridge in the background.

Another view of the poppies around The Tower of London.

Tower Poppies

A night time view of The Tower Poppies

I went back on October 28th to view the poppies again with family and friends, but it was too crowded to to really view or take any photos.

Crowds at The Tower of London viewing the Poppies on the 28th October 2014

In hindsight, I wish I'd photographed the crowd more, but at the time we had been stuck in the crowd for so long that all we wanted to do was get away. Shame, as it was a beautiful day. We went for a lovely Dim Sum in China Town instead. :-)

I leave you with a saluting poppy, photographed this Remembrance Sunday morning, in my front garden.

Thursday, 6 November 2014

The above photograph was created on the evening of November 5th, between 7-8pm, up a hill in Rodborough overlooking part of the Stroud Valley in Gloucestershire, England. Middle right of the image is Stroud town centre.

This image shows an hour's worth of fireworks going off at random from private homes across the valley, and an hours worth of star trails in the sky above. There are also car, airplane, train, lantern and torch light trails throughout the photo as well.

This image took me all evening to create and I had a lot of fun doing so. It is comprised of 103 photographs of 30 second exposures each covering a one hour time span of activity.

Here are a few close-ups from the image above showing more detail of the fireworks. As you can see it was a bit foggy. It was also a bit smoky from the fireworks and bonfires.

And here is a time-lapse movie using the 103 photographs used to create the image at the top of this blog post. (Best viewed on YouTube)

NOTE: I didn't notice I'd dropped the 'e' in 'time-lapse' in the video until after it was created. D'oh! That's what I get for working till 3am on it. :-D

A very brief history...

Tonight was November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night here in Great Britain. It's also called Bonfire Night and Firework Night. On this night every year we remember the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This was the night of a failed conspiracy by a group of English Catholics who set out to assassinate Protestant King James of England.

Guy Fawkes was the unlucky guy caught guarding the stash of gunpowder barrels hidden under the House of Lords at Parliament in London. The King was expected to be there and they had planned on blowing him up...apparently. Anyway, their plans were foiled and Guy Fawkes and several others were caught and brought before the King, tortured and sentenced to death. Hanged, drawn and quartered.

This day eventually became celebrated as the anniversary of this foiled plot and became a state holiday, sorta like the American Independence Day in the States. It was originally called Gunpowder Treason Day, and was a bit more of an important holiday than it is today.

Today it is celebrated with bonfires, burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes and fireworks.

Update 2:

Who ever wrote this article did their homework! I didn't give them all of this information. And they found a photo of me! I think it's a photo of me that was in the paper with some other ladies at the Stroud Business Awards a couple of years ago.

Update 3:

The image in the paper above had several mentions and was talked about on BBC Radio Gloucestershire's morning show with Claire Carter (8 November 2014, 6-9am). Click here for link to show. (Note: Will only be online a limited time) First mentioned and talked about at 48:06. A mention at 01:32:30. And another mention at 02:19:02.

Thursday, 9 October 2014

I've been a bit obsessed about the night sky lately. Well not too obsessed, I'm not out there every night, that'd be silly. Besides, it's cloudy most of the time. But when it's not.....

Star Trails + North Star

Well, when it's not too cloudy.

I was up till two o'clock in the morning creating this image above. Most of that time was actually spent taking the photos that create this image. I took an hours worth of photos (200 images) but I only used half as the sky clouded over for the second half. This image represents about 30 minutes worth of movement in the Earth's rotation to create these star trails.

I used all 200 (well 199, I deleted one) images that I took for the image above to create a timelapse video. This video is only 20 seconds long but represents an hours worth of night sky. Here it is:

I'm new to this type of photography, this is only my third time trying over two days. It's quite fun and addictive I must say! Though it is very time consuming.

Here is my first try at capturing star trails:

Star Trails

And here is my second try.....hanging out an upstairs window. As you do.

Star Trails over Stroud

Both of these images represent 30 minutes worth of movement.

How did I create these images? Well a dark, cloudless, moonless night works best, none of which I had. I locked my camera onto a tripod, set the focus on infinity and switched off the auto focus. (Your camera can't focus in the dark) With camera in Bulb mode I manually set my aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings. I did use different settings for these images, a lot depends on the amount of light etc. A good starting point is ISO 400-800, F2.8 with a 30 second shutter speed. Yes you are right, that's not going to show much movement. But when you take around 50 images (or more), one after the other, with just a little 2 second break in between to keep your sensor from over heating, and you stack these in a photo editing program then blend them together so that all the layers show through, then you can see the movement.

Technical info:
In Photoshop CC > File > Scripts > Load Files Into a Stack
Then Layers > Select all images > Change layer setting from Normal to Lighten
And VOILA! Like magic you can see the star trails.

There's one other thing I used, an app on my phone and a dongle thing from TriggerTrap used to connect my phone to my camera to control my camera and auto take the photos for me. Yea, I just left the camera to do it's thing and came back 30 minutes later to collect the results. Thank you TriggerTrap!

Another handy tool is a night sky map, of which there are several, that you can use to find things like the North Star and locate where the Milky Way is etc. I used Google Sky Map.

There's lots of other apps you can use too, for things like seeing when and where the sun and moon will rise and set and what phase the moon will be in etc, as well as what the weather forecast is. If you are smart and plan ahead these can be very useful and save you lots of time......but I can't be bothered with those, I just go outside and look up at the sky.

I joke about the British weather, but it's not always cold and wet here, we do have lovely sunny days and the most amazing sunsets and sunrises. I'm lucky to be living in the Cotswolds as well, amazing views around here and lots of lovely places to go on long walks. We are very lucky indeed. :-)

Next I try to photograph the Milky Way! I will blog about my results soon!

Oh, I almost forgot! The Stroud News and Journal (Local paper which I occasionally work for) saw my star trail images over Stroud and asked if they could put one in the paper. It's in this week's paper which came out on October 8th 2014.

My star trail photo in the local paper.

Now that I know how to capture star trails I need to find an interesting place to photograph them from...besides my back garden.:-D

Saturday, 20 September 2014

I went to an Olympus Image Space photography event with Giffords Circus along with my husband Peter and my friend Jayne. Oh and around a hundred other photographers! We'd signed up for this event and were lucky to have been chosen as three of the hundred tickets they were giving away. For nearly a week I thought that only Peter had won a place on this event and he enjoyed rubbing it in a bit too much. But about a week later I got my ticket. :-D

(Camera used: Olympus OM-D E-M10 w/ 12-40 2.8)

We were treated to special performances by a few of the circus performers and a photography lighting demonstration by Damian McGillicuddy. The Olympus experts were there with lots of the latest Olympus cameras and lenses for us to try. It was truly an amazing experience and loads of fun. We really enjoyed having a go with the Olympus OM-D collection of cameras and various lenses too! And to make things even better they gave us each an 8GB SD card which we could put in the cameras and keep the images we took during the show. Awesomeness!

(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 70-200mm 2.8 L)

The cameras and lenses I had a play with were the Olympus OM-D E-M10 & the OM-D E-M1 along with the 17mm 1.8, 45mm 1.8, 75mm 1.8 and the 12-40mm 2.8 lenses. My favourite of the two cameras being the OM-D E-M1.

(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 70-200mm 2.8 L)

By now you've probably notice that I've mostly posted images from my Canon camera. No reason behind this, these were just the images I took first mainly. I didn't have an Olympus camera at first, had to wait my turn and I was sharing. Also there were a few times when I used my Canon over the Olympus only because of the focal length. I was actually mostly using the Olympus cameras. After all that was the main reason for going, to try out their kit. :-)

(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 16-35mm 2.8 L)

The other main reason for going was for Damian McGillicuddy's mini lighting workshop. He set up a couple shoots and explained what he was using, how he was using it and why. He even let a few people have a go. But he didn't let me have a go. **pokes bottom lip out** But he made up for it afterwards by having a chat with my friend Jayne about cameras and her unique situation. Check out Jayne's blog "Life Beats On" to find out more.

Damian McGillicuddy
(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 70-200mm 2.8 L)

I can highly recommend Damian McGillicudy's workshops, I've seen him speak and demonstrate photography set ups a couple of times now. He's very entertaining, informative and easy to understand.

I really enjoyed using the Olympus OM-D E-M1. I might have had a play with it before at either a friend's studio or at another Olympus event, I can't remember, but it was only a quick look, I hadn't actually used it before. The fun bit was finding my way around the camera in the dark! But actually that wasn't as difficult as it sounds. The camera controls were easy to navigate and figure out quite quickly. I really like that about this camera.

Damian at work
(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 70-200mm 2.8 L)

Now, I was able to get better images out of my Canon at first simply because I know my way around that camera. Knowing your way around the camera you are using is more important than which camera you are using. A more expensive camera does not make you an better photographer, knowing your kit does.

Damian McGillicudy showing us the back of his camera and the image he's just shot.
(Camera used: Olympus OM-D E-M1 w/ 75mm 1.8)

The main things I liked about the OM-D cameras are that they are small and light weight, when compared with my full framed DSLR and pro lenses that is. I found them very easy to navigate without having to ask for help. I picked it up and started shooting right away. And last but not least, image quality is outstanding. Mind you, we were shooting in very difficult situations under the big top.

(Camera used: Olympus OM-D E-M1 w/ 75mm 1.8)

All of the images I'm posting were taken using available light and I was shooting from the stands. I didn't sit still, I was busy changing my location for different view points. In other words I was all over the place. As this was a special photographic event there was space and freedom to do this. I wouldn't have been able to do this during an actual show. Thank you Olympus & Giffords Circus!!

(Camera used: Canon 5D II w/ 70-200mm 2.8 L)

Also all of these images have been processed by me using Adobe Photoshop CC. Some have been processed more than others for creative effect. I didn't have to do any special or extra processing on the images from the Olympus cameras beyond what I normally do for my Canon images. The image above is my most processed image from this day as I removed a couple of things from the image that was bothering me. :-D

(Camera used: Olympus OM-D E-M1 w/ 75mm 1.8)

In the image above, these ladies are mostly in the dark. The E-M1 handled it quite well and I'm well impressed.

It was nice to see so many ladies at this event. Photography related evens are usually mainly attended by men. The men outnumber the women at the local photography clubs too I've noticed. Among my photography friends though, it's about half and half.

In conclusion this was a fab event for anyone who's interested in photography no matter what kit you use. Especially good if you are in the market for a new camera and you aren't sure what you want. It's an amazing opportunity to have a go with different equipment to see if you get on with it and to see how it performs.

The OM-D E-M1 is an amazing bit of kit and it's now on my 'want' list. It would be great to shoot with it side by side with my other cameras (including an older Oly I have) to see how they compare. It is an expensive bit of kit though, so I'd best get to saving my pennies!

Monday, 23 June 2014

(Sorry if there is a long load time, I've included a lot of photos in this post)

That's right, Paris all night long! Travel there, take photos all night, then travel back home to Stroud the next morning. This is the brain child of Ghene Snowdon who does these fantastic all night photo meets. Ghene, along with other longstanding members of the London Flickr Meetups Group, organizes these sorts of meets every year. Including London All Nighters as well as Paris All Nighters. Until now I've never been on one, though I have been very tempted many times over the years. But things just didn't line up right for me to go.

This year was no different really, I've been so busy that the meet just passed me by...or so I thought! On the Monday before the weekend of the '2014 Paris All Nighter' on the 7th and 8th of June, Ghene contacted me and asked if I'd like to go in her place as something had come up and she couldn't go. At first I was stunned but then I quickly looked at my calendar and decided I could manage it. Quickly discussed it with hubby and then accepted the challenge to fill Ghene's shoes for the trip. Don't let her small size fool you, she may be a very tiny person but her shoes are very difficult to fill! Lucky for me she had everything all planned out and she sent me her itinerary with maps and even talked me through it on the phone. All I had to do was follow her instructions, manage tickets and lead the group around Paris all night on an amazing photo expedition. Oh and stay awake all night!

I was extremely excited about the trip and more than a bit nervous about being the group leader! I've organized and lead several photographic expeditions over the years myself, but never one this far away or to a place I wasn't familiar with. Like I said before, lucky for me, Ghene had it all planned down to a 'T' and passed all this information over to me to follow. I still had to plan my trip to London though and I begin looking up train times and trying to figure out how to get from Paddington to St Pancras etc. I started my own itinerary with notes and directions for me to follow on the day. My husband Peter was also helping me with this as he grew up in London and knows his way around. He even sneaked a few notes into my itinerary himself which I found later. Like after the notes about meeting the crew at St Pancras by the giant Kissing Statue he added: "Ask who knows Paris and give them the map." Lucky for him I have his sense of humour.

So my journey begins.... On Saturday I left Stroud on the 11:35 morning train to London Paddington where I caught the Underground Hammersmith and City Line to Kings Cross, which is next door to St Pancras station where we catch the Eurostar to Paris. I met Ghene there and she went over things with me again before taking me to meet the group of photographers who were going on this trip. Quick chat then off to catch the 15:31 Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord....where we lose an hour as Paris is an hour ahead of London time. We arrive in Paris at 18:47. (For those not familiar with the 24 hour clock that is 6:47pm)

Most of the gang at Gare du Nord down in the Metro in Paris (L to R) Ravi, Julie, Jackie, Mike just behind David & Kieron.

We regroup and meet up with others of the group already in Paris then head down to the Metro to catch a train to our first destination. There are suppose to be 9 of us but one person couldn't make it. There is Mike, Ravi, David, Kieron, Julie, Chris, Jackie and myself. I sort out our Metro tickets and we head for our platform.... only to be rushed off and back into the station by armed men who I think are police but I'm not sure. Some of us speak French (Not myself) but that didn't help with the overhead announcements, we wouldn't have understood them even if they'd been speaking English. I'm with quite a clever bunch though and they figured out there was a package left on the platform unattended and they figured there was a panic as the Queen of the United Kingdom was also visiting Paris this weekend as well, traveling as we had on the Eurostar from London to the Gare du Nord. As well as The Queen there were other leaders from around the world there as well including President Obama who were all there for the D Day Commemoration.

The Metro in Paris

At this time I tried out this app that my friends Liz and James told me about. It's called 'Word Lens' and uses your phone's camera to translate different languages. I just opened the app, pointed the phone camera at the digital sign giving us information and it translated it. Really cool app! Anyway that confirmed unidentified package on the platform. A little while later we heard a muffled explosion. They performed a controlled explosion on the package. It didn't sound like it was very far away from where we were either. Soon after that we were allowed back on the platform to wait for our train. So I guess you could say our trip started out with a BANG! :-D

Mike photographing people down in the Metro while we waited for our train.

All of this put us way behind schedule of course but that didn't seem to bother any of us. We just continued on taking photographs along the way.

Waiting for our Metro train.

Mike never stopped taking photos :-)

Our first stop was Tour Montparnasse to photograph the sunset. We went all the way to the top where there were beautiful views all around Paris including the Eiffel Tower....which I mostly photographed. Sorry, newbie in Paris and all that. ;-)

Apparently, I'm told, that the best views of Paris are from the Tour Montparnasse.....as it's the only place in Paris where you can't see the huge Tour Montparnasse! It is a very large building. :-)

I really enjoyed photographing the sunset over Paris...as you've probably noticed from all the photos of the Eiffel Tower. I did take my Lee filters and I did try to use them but I found them too fiddly in a crowd of people all jostling for the few openings in the glass to take a clear shot of the sunset...so I put them away before I damaged or dropped one off the building.

The view from my camera....with another camera. The line going across the middle shows the small opening they left for cameras to take photos. The glass was quite clean but still not ideal to shoot though, so we really appreciated the little openings.

Back on the Underground...sorry Metro. I really liked their centre poles that split into three. Much nicer when trying to share space. In this photo: David, Ravi, Mike and Julie.

Kieron & Mike photographing Centre Pompidou.

After sunset on top of Tour Montparnasse, which was around 20:02 (8:02pm) we headed for Centre Pompidou. It was quite dark by the time we got there. It is a very strange building indeed! I didn't take very many photos here myself, but the others really enjoyed photographing it. I found a post to sit on and enjoyed the scenery, then we had to go and find Jackie as she'd lost us. Turns out she'd followed the wrong group of people for a while. We found her though, she wasn't far away. :-)

Rue Saint Merri, art installation.

By this time it was getting close to midnight and we headed on foot towards Notre Dame via Rue Saint Merri, Rue Du Renard, passing Hotel De Ville, then Point d'Arcole and to Rue d'Arcole before reaching Notre Dame. I couldn't tell you if we hit all those points or not, but I believe we made most of them.

Hotel de Ville

I believe this to be Pont d'Arcole or very near it. :-) In this photo, upper right is Ravi, David, Julie and Mike.

By this time it is around midnight and we are running a bit behind schedule, but no worries, we are enjoying ourselves and taking lots of photographs. The Sax player above was particularly photographed quite well by our crew. Bless him. ;-)

Notre Dame

Ahhh Notre Dame! For the above shot I just had to pull my 24mm tilt shift lens out. It's quite a complicated lens to use so it took me a few minutes to set the shot up and get the exposure correct, especially in the dark! I really enjoy using that lens though. Worth every penny and worth all the trouble.

Bridge near Notre Dame over the Seine River. In other words, I've no idea.

Pont des Arts AKA Love Locks Bridge.

Next stop is Pont des Arts with it's famous Love Locks Bridge. Hundreds of thousands of locks are locked to this bridge, couples come every day to lock their love to the bridge with locks with their names written on them and then they throw away the key into the river below. You may have seen love locks locked to bridges near you or on your travels. I believe this bridge is where it all started.

Love Locks Bridge (Pont des Arts)

Now while I was on this bridge looking at all these locks I thought to myself...all those locks must be mighty heavy and can't be good for the bridge or its railings. Sure enough later that afternoon on Sunday (after we were long gone I might add!) part of the railings collapsed under the weight of all the locks. Here's a story about it in the Independent: Part of Paris bridge collapses under weight of 'love locks' left by tourists

Louvre Museum

Around 01:30 in the morning we arrived at Louvre Museum. It was closed of course! But we only came to photograph the famous illuminated pyramid in its courtyard, and sit down for a little break. We were happy to see that the lights were still on.

After this we went on a long walk to find the restaurant where we were to have our late night supper. I think it was round 02:30-03:00 when we found it. Everyone had pizza except me who had a lovely salad. I wasn't hungry but I knew I needed to eat as I hadn't had any food since arriving in Paris. Mainly I needed to drink some liquids.

Arc De Triomphe

After some much needed nourishment and rest we went to find the Arc De Triomphe. Of course I had to get in the middle of the road to photograph it. :-D

It's now around 5am. It's not a real long time till our train back to London comes so we decided to head in the direction of the station and have a bit of breakfast and a natter. Chris and Julie were both staying in Paris and Chris left us earlier in the evening to go to his hotel room. Julie stayed with us till the end before heading for her sister's house somewhere in Paris. The rest of us headed for our Eurostar train back to London with myself traveling on to Stroud.

Sunrise near Gare du Nord

What an amazing trip and experience! Though to be honest if I ever do it again it will be with a hotel waiting for me in Paris! I stayed awake quite easily all night but the trip home was quite a struggle. I'd do it again in a heart beat though. :-)

Time home in Stroud, just after Noon on Sunday.

For the photographers who are interested in what gear I took. Not as much as I wanted and far too much at the same time. I did use most everything I took but I do wish I'd left the Lee filters behind. Could have probably left one of the other lenses behind too, like the 16-35. Oh and the 50! I didn't even use that one I don't think! Tripod was very handy, though heavy. I really need to find me a smaller lighter tripod for trips like this. Loved the 70-200 for the sunset photos and the 24-70 for most everything else. Oh and though I didn't use it much I was glad I had the 24mm tilt shift lens.

I also took a smallish compact camera with me as well, which I took quite a few photos with. Could have almost made do with that most of the time to be honest. Half the photos above are from my Sony RX100 II camera.

I had also taken a jacket for warmth, which I did not need and never took out. A rain coat and an umbrella as it was suppose to rain cats and dogs on us, but as it turns out I didn't need those either. It did rain but only while we were in the restaurant. We were really lucky with the weather.

It other words I carried way too much stuff which I had to lug around. Never mind, I consider it insurance, if I hadn't have brought those things we would have been cold and wet all night! You're welcome! ;-)